


Do the Thing

by JackedofSpades



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, Kissing, Sharing a Bed, dumbassery of the highest caliber
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-13 17:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21189860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackedofSpades/pseuds/JackedofSpades
Summary: Bed sharing fic with kissing that happens immediately following the end of Chapter 31, except clearly they don't go to sleep right away.





	Do the Thing

"_Go to sleep_, Gideon."

Gideon smirked and turned in her new cavalier bed, finding the unfamiliarity of it fitting with the rest of the shit that was going on. Harrow had just told her that it was Crux that had planted the bomb in the shuttle, and it was weirder and weirder how with every loose thread she pulled, the image of Harrowhark, Hater Primary of Gideon Nav, unraveled into naught but dust and misinterpretation.

Gideon heard Harrow turn in her bed as well, and the soft sigh of a pillow being beaten into a more comfortable form. How fucking strange too, that Harrow's close proximity was now a salve to her childhood wounds. But it was stupid to dwell on it, now that it was, miraculously, all out in the open. More miraculous still, seemingly resolved. The popping of bones broke the silence, Harrow cracking the joints of her fingers and toes.

"Gross," Gideon said fondly. More shuffling and fluffing of pillows joined the bone chorus, and then they settled back into dark calm. Gideon drifted. The cavalier bed, small and less padded than her necromancer's, was still several powers more comfy than her makeshift nest in the living room. She was just falling into that space between waking and sleep, previews of dreams dancing and melding with her still conscious mind, when she heard the softest sound: "Gideon?"

Gideon fought to open her eyes, feeling both that she was asleep for seconds and for hours. "What's good, babe?" She said blearily. When Harrow didn't answer, she thought she had dreamed the voice, then Harrow said, "I can't sleep."

Gideon's eyes fluttered open and she turned to see the dim lump of Harrow's body, her pale face like a moon on a starless night. "Yeah, you're shit at that, so I'm not surprised."

Harrow fidgeted under her blanket but said nothing. Seconds passed, and then before Gideon knew it she was up on her feet, rounding the bed to stand before Harrow. "My sleepless sovereign, shall I fetch you water, or perhaps hit you hard enough to induce a coma?" She went down on one knee for effect, banking on their Ninth House night vision to save it from being a waste.

"Idiot," Harrow said, her tone alarmingly soft. Gideon rose, still standing over her necromancer, Harrow’s white unpainted face like a skull in a sea of black blankets all the same. Gideon turned to the little table beside the bed and lit the weak flame of a single candle. She looked back to see hard shadows cast on Harrow's face, the dark wells of her eyes and side of her nose elongated in shadow.

"Ambiance," Gideon said, as much to herself as to Harrow. She walked back to the edge of the bed, standing there, desperately trying to logic why she was doing it. Harrow's expression had changed, or rather, now Gideon could see it. Harrow was staring up at her, her pitch colored eyes intent and clear as she took in the image of Gideon, backlit by flickering flame.

"Come here," Harrow said finally as she looked down her nose, trying to stare at her mouth's betrayal. Gideon didn't move, paralyzed temporarily by the hot pang that shot down her spinal cord: Fear, but like, sexy. "Please," Harrow added, wildly unnecessarily, interpreting Gideon's hesitation bonkers wrongly.

Gideon closed the short distance between her and the bed and almost lost it as Harrow drew back her blanket in one fell swoop, in the same manner she would dramatically throw out her robes when disappearing darkly in a necromantic huff. Harrow scooted back in the bed, leaving a Gideon-sized space for her cavalier to fill.

"God. Okay, whatever." Gideon flopped down in the bed as if her legs had been swept out from under her, because they metaphorically had been. Also it because it was funny, and it was her thing to use humor to cope with emotions. Duh.

Blessedly, Harrow had not attempted to throw the covers over Gideon, but wrapped them around herself in a dark cocoon, her little hands balled in fists behind the cloth. Gideon relaxed marginally. They laid there, just looking at other, unpainted vulnerable, for what felt like one thousand repressed years.

"Okay, truth or dare," Gideon said because her brain was on fire.

"You can't be serious."

"I am not. That would be un-fucking-tenable. But seriously, say something. Anything."

Harrow's mouth quivered and then her features went still. She seemed to be considering deeply, her eyebrows knitting as if each represented a side in the war within her. Gideon was silently flipping one whole shit.

"Titties," Harrow said gravely. Gideon laughed so abruptly she thought she would piss herself. "_Why--_" Gideon started, caught up in another wrack of laughter as she reached out to steady herself absolutely needlessly with a hand on Harrow's shoulder. "--the fuck are you like this?"

"'Tis your vile and detestable influence over my once stolid and funereal personality." Gideon had to look again to make sure this was really coming out of Harrow's mouth and then Harrow's pert lips broke into a downright pretty smirk. "I knew it would make you laugh. I wanted to hear it."

Gideon’s chest twisted and she had to look away. It was all too fucking much. She threw her head back on Harrow's recently vacated pillow. "Gonna need more than a day to adjust to you being a person. I wasn't sold at first, but I gotta say, it's a marked improvement from hellish witch who would sell my soul for one bone chip." Too much talking, happening far too quickly, perhaps as quick as Gideon's pulse. Gideon closed her eyes and felt Harrow shift beside her. Closer.

"Nav, you must again forgive me for my previous--"

"Nope! We're not doing this shit again!"

"But you must know how I feel now is--"

"Titties, titties, titties, titties!" Silence reigned for two seconds and then Harrow said: "You leave me at a distinct disadvantage, in _that_ respect." If Harrow was looking down Gideon's shirt right now, she didn't know because her eyes had considerately melted to protect her.

"Actually, fuck this? For once in my life, I don't want to think about titties."

"God, I'm so _bad_ at this."

Gideon refused to consider the meaning of "this" and opened her melted eyes. She saw a much closer Harrow worrying over the edge of her blanket, her unpainted face showing all her cards. She was upset. She was nervous. She was cute as hell. Wait.

"My obsidian contessa," Gideon said because Harrow loved that shit, and damnit she was kinda into it too, "you do me no favors with the self-depreciation bullshit. Can we, just for tonight, say we're even and just enjoy each other's company?" She hadn't meant to say the last bit. Mmm, fuck.

Harrow reluctantly nodded in agreement, perhaps not trusting herself to speak again. She threw off the blanket halfway, her pallid arms exposed to the shoulder, her clavicle woefully inviting as she turned towards her cavalier. Gideon snatched up Harrow's hand and held it like a spider trapped between her palms. Harrow looked at her strangely, but did nothing to protest. In fact, she went stock still, like prey waiting for the teeth. Gideon ran a thumb over Harrow's knuckles in a rhythmic back and forth.

"Would you do me a favor?" Harrow asked a minute later, her forces clearly marshaled by the finality of her tone.

_I would die for you, _Gideon thought, but that was so stupendously overwrought she wouldn't even be able to turn it to a joke. Instead, Gideon's voice cracked and she just said: "Shoot."

Harrow looked down, her eyes unfocused in thought as she began to gently run her index finger down the palmaris longus of Gideon's wrist. "You've done it before, so I don't believe it shall be difficult to repeat." Shit was getting cryptic. Gideon's heart got angry and skipped a beat and sexy fear made a glorious encore performance down her spine.

"Mmmkay," Gideon said.

Harrow looked up through ebony lashes, stark like the slashes of their paint through their lips. Or maybe like the dry runnels that appeared on Harrows lips when she was sucked dry of thanergy. Like the hard line Harrow's lips cut when she was displeased. Or some other metaphor that included Harrow's lips because apparently that's all Gideon could damn well think of at the moment.

"When we were in the pool--" Alarm bells began to ring loudly, but only between Gideon's ears. "--right before you . . . said the _words . . . _you did a _thing_."

"Yep. Words and things. Remember them well."

Harrow picked her hips up off the mattress and pressed herself experimentally against Gideon. Gideon's ghost arms, which she didn't control at all, reached out and pulled her necromancer flush against her. Harrow, as if trying to refresh Gideon's memory further, made _that_ noise again. Harrow's arms were tucked up into her chest and the tip of her nose brushed Gideon's clavicle. She reached out, her index finger running along the bone, back and forth, as Gideon had done to her knuckles. "Could you . . . do that _thing_ again?"

"The _thing_?"

"Yes, the _thing_. Please."

Gideon did the thing. Her lips found the space between Harrow's brow and nose and it was like coming home. Not shitty Ninth House, but where home had always been. She lifted her lips from her necromancer's warm skin only for the pleasure of pressing them to her again. And again.

"Gideon . . ." Harrow said, her voice breathy and horribly sincere. The sharp intake of breath as Gideon held her tighter was like the first prayer for two new gods. Or one, depending on how fucking macabre you were. Cavalier held necromancer, lips pressed to skin as sword-calloused fingers danced down thin pale arms. Harrow reached out, her bird-arms unfolding to reach out and caress Gideon's incredible biceps. She spread her fingers around the width of them and found herself wanting. "Who needs titties . . ." Harrow mumbled, sotto voce, but Gideon was so damn close she heard her. Harrow felt Gideon's smile spread across her skin.

"Feeling me up now, huh? That's _gay._"

"_You're_ gay."

It was horrible how easy this was, to be both new and old and together all the same. Like a three-dimensional puzzle but no matter how you turned the pieces, they always came together. Then Harrow said something so painful and ridiculous that Harrow had to have felt Gideon’s heart beating rupturously against her ribcage.

"Gideon . . . could you do the_ thing _. . . but . . . _lower_."

Couldn't even make a fucking "how much lower" joke. But she could stall, and that stalling could cover her blown nerves and might pass for coy and intentional. She pulled her arm back and cupped Harrow's chin in her hand. First, she kissed the tip of Harrow's nose. She stopped, her eyebrow arching coyly all on its own.

"_Nav_."

"What? I did as you commanded, my twilight queen."

Absurdly, Harrow blushed and looked away. She gripped the front of Gideon's shirt and balled it into a fist as she pulled the fabric impotently. "_Lower, still,_" she said in a hateful whisper much like the Old Harrow. Gideon leaned in and kissed her cheek, Harrow still facing away from her. Gideon pulled back and Harrow turned her head in a rage. "Gideon_ fucking _Nav," Harrow said, and the rage was so sweet because Gideon had caused it, the same old seratonin receptors she had slammed repeatedly by pissing off the Scion of the Ninth in her childhood, aflame again from newer, way, _way_ more satisfying stimuli.

"If there is something you wish of me, Nonagesimus, you need only ask."

It was only now that Gideon began to realize how much Harrow was enjoying her torture. Her legs had wrapped around Gideon's and her breath was no longer stuttered but heavy. Her pupils were blown like someone had shot them open with a gun, and her hand was so tightly wrapped around Gideon's shirt, she thought she might tear it off, creating a whole 'nother level of hell for her necromancer to enjoy.

"Griddle, if you do not kiss me this instant, I shall expire here and now, and this fetid mattress shall become my deathbed."

Somehow it took all of this nonsense for Gideon the Ninth to realize that Harrowhark Nonagesimus _wanted_ her. Maybe even as desperately as Gideon wanted her.

Gideon kissed her, most solidly on the lips, her head tilted to escape a cut from that razor of a nose. She didn't let go, didn't move away even as she was running out of breath. She would die of asphyxiation and all other sorts of dumb nec-romantic nonsense the joke part of her brain could come up with because _god,_ was it good to kiss Harrow finally. How much of her life had she spent subconsciously waiting for this? How much of it consciously?

Harrow's bony little hands came up and twisted into her cavalier's fiery locks. Gideon pulled her closer, and they gasped in unison as Harrow tugged Gideon's hair to get her to let go so they could breath. Gideon also gasped because the hair pulling, but she promptly sorted that one for later examination.

They stared at each other as they caught their breath, not quite believing the reality of the other. Whatever emotions and thoughts Gideon was having, she knew Harrow was having the same, albeit darker and spookier versions. Probably.

"Hey so, that was pretty cool," Gideon said like an idiot. God, she was really so pretty, all the stupid, angry, pointy things about her just congealing like a horrible mass into something gorgeous and ethereal. Harrowhark really was her goddamn twilight queen.

"Indeed," Harrow intoned, her voice low and dangerous and this time Gideon had a second to catch a breath before Harrow kissed her. Harrow left one hand in Gideon's hair and the other fell to her neck, running fingers over the tendons, Gideon's pulse jumping obediently under her necromancer's touch. Harrow's tongue darted against Gideon's lips, knocking on them like they were door X-204 and she wanted the fuck in. She sure as hell had permission and now it was Gideon's turn to make the embarrassing noise as she melted into Harrow as her tongue brushed her own. Gideon gave her everything, letting her necromancer have anything she wished, pulling her so close it felt for a moment as if they were one single person. It was scary hot.

Eventually they subsided, true fatigue finding them finally after their very long, very gay day. Gideon was still kissing her necromancer, back again on her forehead and nose, as Harrow stilled in her arms and drifted to sleep. Gideon smiled at her expression, peaceful and happy, one of Gideon's biceps her pillow. Now that she had gotten her necro to sleep, Gideon felt sleep coming for her too. "Okay, _now_ it's all worth it," she thought as her eyes closed on the sight of Harrow's too lovely face. "At least now I can die fucking happy."

In her sleep, Harrow reached for Gideon and refused to let her go.


End file.
